A Hedge Fund Has Physically Taken Control Of A Ship Belonging To Argentina's Navy

The above ship is the ARA Libertad, a training ship owned by the
Argentine navy.

And now it's been seized. By a hedge fund. While it was docked in
Ghana.

Why? Because Argentina is in a long legal battle with the hedge
fund Elliott Capital Management, which has been trying for years
and years to get Argentina to pay a 2001 bond it owes in full.
Because recently won a court judgment saying that Argentina owes
it money, it was able to get an injunction from the government of
Ghana saying it's entitled to take the ship.

The vulture funds have crossed a new limit in their attacks on
the Argentine Republic. The Frigate Libertad has been held
in the Republic of Ghana over a recourse presented by NML Group
before the courts of that country. The Argentine Foreign
Ministry has already taken steps with the African nation’s
government to clear up the deception that the unscrupulous
financiers have mounted. That measure is in violation of
the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity.

The vulture fund NML has its headquarters in the Cayman Island, a
fiscal lair that it’s worth recalling is a colony of Great
Britain, from which those who don’t submit themselves to the laws
of any jurisdiction operate and they’ve been denounced both by
the G-20 and the United Nations.

The NML Group belongs to international speculator Paul Singer and
he is the main financier of the lobby that operates in the courts
and the Congress of the United States with the name “ATFA” (Task
Force Argentina) to damage our country. Also, they
disseminate false information for the use of some Argentine
monopolistic press media, with the goal of extorting Argentina in
order to obtain usurious profits from buying Argentine bonds for
pennies during the 2001 crisis and refusing to join the 93% of
the investors that agreed to the debt restructuring.

That group of lobbyists are the same that tried to harass the
President during her recent trip to the United States passing out
aggressive fliers against the presidential investiture.
Another of its actions was to place a gigantic rat in the doorway
of the Argentine embassy in Washington when the anniversary of
our independence was being celebrated.

The Foreign Ministry reiterates that it is the decision of
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to not bow before the
international and local attempts at extortion that have been
brought forth by the vulture funds and will continue to denounce
them in various forums such as the G-20, the United Nations,
CELAC, UNASUR and MERCOSUR, FATF and the other multilateral
organizations.